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Saturday, October 23, 2010

In September, we had reviewed the different eReaders in the market and concluded that the Nook from Barnes & Noble had the slight lead in features. This is NO longer true. The Kindle is now ahead.The only advantage the Nook had over the Kindle was the ability to lend books to other Nook owners for a period of two weeks. A lot of users really liked that feature, which reminded them of the traditional lending of books on paper that happens all the time.

Amazon announced yesterday that this loaning feature is coming to the Kindle. This means that Amazon has not only matched any of the features of other eReaders worth emulating, including the iPad, but has surpassed them with the additional announcement that newspapers and magazines will also be accessible in not only their Kindle, but, in all their apps for the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and Android. Their only obstacle left is a good color screen truly designed for reading. We are sure they are working on it.

UPDATE 10/28/10- Since I posted this article, Barnes & Nobles has come out with a color Nook named, COLORNook. While this might seem like leapfrogging the Kindle, we do not feel it is. Amazon could have easily put a color screen on their eReader long ago. But the critical question is if a color screen will produce the same non-strained experience for an extensive readers as the e-ink technology now. We do not feel it does. The real innovation will be the integration of new color screen technology of an upcoming product like the Mirasol. We have posted an article on this. Look under related articles or search for Mirasol or click on the label mirasol at the end of this article.